Trademarks and Google* Searches

Is it okay to use trademarks as keywords for searches?

The answer to that question depends on where you are. Courts are split.

For an easy to understand quick summary on the topic, ipFrontline.com has a great article For Sale - Your Trademark as a Keyword, by Jason M. Hunt and Brian J. Laurenzo.

This article doesn't mention much about why courts are split on the issue. My personal opinion is that this use of a trademark for advertising is akin to the phrase often present on a generic product on a store shelf, "compare to [brand X]." The difference is that people can tell the difference between brand name shampoo and the generic counterpart that happens to have the brand name as part of the "compare to" phrase.

Unfortunately, on search pages, people get confused. They often can't differentiate where the actual results of their search start. I don't know that I blame them. After all, Google* returns standard results and "sponsored links." If I didn't know better, I may conclude that Google* has chosen to sponsor these pages because they're particularly good. Perhaps the problem is not that keywords violate trademark law, but that people are unable to tell the difference between an advertisement and their search results. Maybe Google*, and other search engines could avoid trademark lawsuits by simply changing the titles for their advertising section.

* I use Google as an example only because it's my favorite search engine.